C or C

This Anthology contains the winning poems from
Frosted Fire SIXTH Annual Single-poem Competition

First Prize AUDIO: £300 Elisa Schwarz
First Prize TEXT: £300 Michelle Smith
Four runner up prizes of £25:
Alfreda Black, Christine Griffin, Kristen Mears, Richard Whiting
Highly Commended poets (shortlist):
Curtis Brown, Emeline Winston, John Ling, Katharine Cossham, Neal Mason, Sarah Terkaoui
Commended poets (longlist):
Anthony Watts, Becky Edwards, David Ashbee, Derek Sellen, Emeline Winston, John Ling, Peter Lockhart

Alphabetical list of poets

Alfreda Black, Anthony Watts, Becky Edwards, Christine Griffin , Curtis Brown, David Ashbee, Derek Sellen, Elisa Schwarz, Emeline Winston, John Ling, Katharine Cossham , Kristen Mears, Michelle Smith, Neal Mason , Peter Lockhart , Richard Whiting, Sarah Terkaoui

indicates one audio

Sarah Terkaoui

A Love Poem For A Dictator

You are unique, a man who lost
his spine, his jaw,
a man who lost
the sight he wished for others.
You could have been magnificent
as the crystals of your chandeliers
and your wife’s shoes,
your reputation spotless
as marbled floors ringing
with the click and clip of Italian leather
on your general’s feet.
You love your country
as no one else can,
have nourished its earth,
fertilised it with bone meal and blood,
left the stink of your armpits over its face
as you held it close.
One day orchards will grow from massed graves
and we shall feast on your wisdom.
You have made your people self-sufficient,
kept famine at bay
by culling your greedy herd. 
You hold all knowledge in your hands,
so you knew
when you released your locust swarms
upon your people,
they would tear through the dry earth
with talons and fangs,
rake up the dust
and throw it down again as death.
They would burn fields and the farms.
This is how you regenerate the land.
I forget If you had a meme for this,
like the others. And you are right,
it is funny to watch the children die.

Sarah Terkaoui is an Irish/Syrian poet (sterkaoui.com). She was shortlisted for the Cinnamon Press Poetry Pamphlet Award 2022, commended for the Goldsmiths Poetry Festival and the Hippocrates Poetry Prize 2021, and longlisted for the Live Canon international poetry Prize 2021 and the Swedenborg House filmfest 2025. Sarah has been widely published including in Magma, Antae, Black Iris, Ink Sweat & Tears, Imposter, Porridge, Green Ink Poetry, and Propel.

Richard Whiting

Armed Turkish Girl

( After a photograph by Don McCullin)

I find her, young and old
at eighteen.
An only child
now that her brother lies dead
on the cool stone flags
of the kitchen floor.

She is from Cyprus,
the sixties,
from then
and there

and now
she’s caught,
in static motion,
eyes downcast, dry
and calculating.
Her rifle is loaded,
held as grabbed,
the heel-strike of her shoe
palpably audible.

Her skirt is dark Turkish check
light enough to catch a breeze,
or the eye of a lad
passing on his bicycle
in the last moments
before the gunman.

She is a warrior
in a headscarf.
She is an old war
and any old war.

She is love and justice
sentenced to death.

Richard Whiting is a poet from Bury St Edmunds who has two poetry pamphlets published by Littoral Press. He is a Trustee of Suffolk Poetry Society and a referee of poetry for its biannual journal Twelve Rivers. His published poetry includes two Write Out Loud anthology inclusions , their Covid collection Beyond The Storm (2021) and their twentieth Anniversary collection Echoes (2025). He is married with two grown up sons and is owned by his fourteen month old Labrador Remy.

Christine Griffin

Colliery Band

To a count of four, lads.

and from deep within us
a mighty chord swells,
soars above mean terraces,
slag heaps, hulking pitheads
blighted valleys.
A golden plover drifts
over the cloud-mottled fells
as a shaft of wintry sunlight
paints the moorland heather purple.

Gentle now, horns. Don’t push it.
Let it linger.

oh the joy of letting anything linger
in this frantic world of mines,
bosses, desperation.
My part, simple, pure, frees the mind,
glancing light cancels hellish dark,
mellow sound, rich, harmonious,
soothes ringing, discordant pit-clamour.

Bit of welly here. Loud you cornets.

The crowd hums to our closing tune,
and we, who were lost are
for this brief moment found,
who were blind, now see

Same time next week, lads

We leave for chapel, supper by the fire,
             and a sense of heaven in our hell.

Christine Griffin writes poetry and short stories. She is widely published both nationally and internationally and has many competition wins to her name. She has performed her work at the Cheltenham Literature Festival and the Cheltenham Poetry Festival as well as at the annual Stroud Short Stories event. She was recently Highly Commended in the 2025 Laurie Lee Prize for Writing.

Curtis Brown

Curtis Brown is a poet, and multi-disciplinary artist based in London, UK. His poetry has been published in numerous journals, and anthologies, including Masque & Spectacle, Caribbean Writer, and Under the Radar. His poetry films have been selected for several film festivals around the globe. Curtis can often be found growing in green spaces.

Peter Lockhart

Holy land

The leaders went off 
to oversee the re-stack of military vehicles
leaving us momentarily to our own devices.
We should have made a run for it. Instead
 
we were drawn to the olive trees, helping the kids 
on to the lower branches
so they could enjoy clambering around 
without too much danger. That small concern
 
seems a frivolous luxury now.
We prepared a feast, of acorns and buttercups,
on the far side of the playground
using the silver salver of the slide’s
 
deceleration apron as a makeshift table, 
our legs tucked under and interlaced,
between the sand and the polished chrome.
That’s how they found us, and for a moment
 
there was curiosity
in the flint of their abbreviated faces, 
before they clattered down the slide 
headfirst, or ran up the slide the wrong way,
 
behaviour that would have been strictly prohibited 
under the old park bylaws, scattering
seeds and small picnicking children, grinding
meadow flowers to a grubby pulp. 
 
Perhaps things would have worked out differently 
if we’d feasted on more modest fare,
been generally less ostentatious
in our sharing of insignificant things.

Peter Lockhart is from Blackpool, Lancashire, now based in Guildford, Surrey, where he lives with his family and dog, Ted. Peter has bits and bobs published or forthcoming in journals and anthologies including in Acumen, Orbis, Stand, Humana Obscura and with Interwoven.

Katharine Cossham

In a moment’s pause from her summer gardening a lucky English woman considers the nature of the strong message she must send to Mr Farage

This letter comes to you, Mr Nigel Farage from a horrified citizen of nowhere
Not a bloke with a predilection for pints, nor any decent ordinary person of this once beautiful country
Don’t call me right-minded or a patriot, you’ve taken and tarnished such terms
I won’t fly a flag for St George: the pretty Yorkshire Rose has an ugly side now
Maybe it’s better I’m not from round ‘ere
So I don’t feel God’s Own County’s fall from grace so keenly as I might
I don’t count among the people who have spoken
Brexit is not my will, nor my desire; I need to shut up and get over it
I have a friend who voted Leave
She thought it would be interesting to see what happened
 From her I hear you were fun in the jungle, being a celebrity
Get me out of here – your poison is doing its work
The mask slips and you say it straight
“We’ll take a knife to them” “Violence is the next step”
Not far from here, in a sad land that time forgot, where I once worked and wasn’t very welcome
Whole families turn out for a day at the local riot
Your hapless, hopeless followers sense a chance to let rip, feel proud, chant
“Yorkshire! Yorkshire! Yorkshire!”
To the shame of the many, the few are fired up and ready to menace desperate people stuffed in hotels
Smash the windows where they are trying to shelter
Only to be met with hate and horror from these ordinary, decent people
In our not-so beautiful country
Masked children chuck stones or are carried along like trophies
Other ones, once citizens of somewhere far away, hide indoors,
Peer out, wide-eyed from their temporary unsafe homes
You, like me, Mr Farage, are no doubt lucky enough to be tucked away
Are you watching the scenes play out, fascinated?
Do they go further than you dreamed of?
Or not far enough?
You keep your hands clean while others do your dirty work
All mock innocence
Good people step up to protect the vulnerable
Step in to clear away the mess
They try to hold together the frayed fabric of our humanity
Bravely stand tall for what is right
In the face of fascism
Inflamed by you and not just you
All those who find you funny, or an excuse for evil

With thanks to Steve Pottinger for the title prompt from his poem “In a moment’s pause . . .” in his book Snapshots from the Fall of Home.

Katharine Cossham is drawn to observational writing and themes of love and loss.  She lives in Sheffield, where she studied English Literature and went on to work in the fields of education and therapy.  She attends Sheffield Writers’ Workshop and has written more recently.  Her poetry is published online in Manic World Magazine and by Fun Lovin Liminals.  A memoir piece is included in GeoStories.  An autobiographical poem will soon appear in an Ey Up anthology from Written Off Publishing.

Kristen Mears

Love as the Corpus Callosum

read by Marilyn Timms

When we run together, our footsteps
sound like one. We share a beat, a winding
river, a pair of keys with twin bitings:
at last I live with you, but don’t. It’s crept
up on me like frost across a lawn, this sense
that no-one else is home. I’m forgetting
that we’re separate people, you duetting
with me like salt with the sea. Though science
stays certain our souls are divided,
tonight I opened the bay windows, watched
a strawberry moon mark the start of summer,
and after the laundry, dishes, dinner, decided
there is no difference—it’s how I washed
my hands, not how one hand washed the other

Kristen Mears is a poet based in Surrey, England. She works as a climbing instructor and writes in her spare time, along with other passions such as baking. She has won or been shortlisted in a variety of awards such as the Bridport Prize, Plough Prize, and the Elmbridge Literary Competition. More of her work can be found on her website at www.kristenmears.co.uk. 

Neal Mason

Moltke

Laconic, it’s said you could be silent
in seven languages, yet, from a wax cylinder
you continue to talk to us.
But not about logistics and railways.
Your military mind, occupied
on two fronts, didn’t run on one track,
engaged the imagination, without which
existence is merely trench warfare.

You talk to us as Hamlet and Faust.
You though, weren’t ineffectual and made
no bargain with fate. Growing up
during the wars of Napoleon the first,
you had no intention of succumbing
to the third. The east and west
sides of your character, the rational
and the cultural, modernised the theatre
of war. French ambition defeated,
Germany united, the balance of power
established the Second Reich
without envisaging the Third.

Neal Mason has collections published by Peterloo Poets, University of Salzburg Press and Holland Park Press. His many competition successes include winning the Phoenix International Play Competition on two consecutive years. Neal taught at University of Wales, WEA etc. and was Writer in Residence for six months in a Welsh valley. He was elected for a masterclass at the Hay-on-Wye Festival and advised the Arts Council’’s Grants to Publishers Panel.
Neal runs the soundwork-uk.co.uk website and has published a novel and a collection of stories

Becky Edwards

Pillbox*

These
grass – gauzed
bricks in the  field retain a
little  mortar.   Jammed   into  the  soil,
they  watch  for  the  lurch  of  bodies,   the  bone-
spread whump of a  grenade, the unbearable  pirouette
of  a  small  plane.  They are  equipped  for  blood.  They
 are  competent  to   present   a  solid   face, to  rebut  the
wailing  of   women   and    to   stand   and  stand,  in   all
weathers.    On    the   world  wide  web,   they  have   no
comment.  Nor on  the  need  for  a  buff  body,  the rage
and  pornography   of   perfection,   neither  the  echo  of
love,   opening   and   shutting   itself   in  halls  of   digital
mirrors.  And the puzzling unkindness of strangers. Their
firm stripes cannot head off the remote, exalted glow of
eternal binary codes. They were not anticipating the
armies of sad young men, alone in their
rooms, ruthlessly fighting
themselves.

*Pillbox — armoured building shielding a machine gun or anti-tank weapon during World War 2.

Becky Edwards started life in a bohemian communal household in North Wales, where her parents were a noted academic and an artist, surrounded by an assortment of kindly alcoholics, hypnotists and kleptomaniacs.  She rebelled against this by becoming an accountant.  This being the case, there is little of interest to note about her later life, but the creative thread from childhood still sometimes re-emerges in her ongoing pleasure in writing poetry.

Emeline Winston

White on White

Still, still, life standing still, st-ill, still ill 
 
waiting for blood test, wait for another 
let’s eliminate this, then eliminate that
and then this too, and then that

next scan Nil by Mouth 
cannula in, cannula out 
cannula in hurts much more than cannula out 
“ now press down hard please on the cotton wool pad”

Still, still, life standing still, st-ill, still ill 

bed up, bed down 
where’s the call bell – press the orange smile 

thrill, thrill, thrill of the day 
wheelchair sortie to the shop
out of Paediatrics across to the lift
where people with coats on try not to look
and wonder what’s wrong

wheeling along the longest corridor 
Mum always accelerates here for fun
a nice old man looks into my eyes and says 
“I hope you have a wonderful life”

next scan, face up this time
decorated ceiling, nice touch
contrast injection freezes its way up the vein 
then the radiographer shows me to “the radioactive loo 
dedicated just for you”
 
Still, still, life standing still, st-ill, still ill 
still here, still adapting, still patient, still brave 
still working things out 
still sabotaged, still camouflaged 
my white face on white sheets
where do I start and where do I end
white, white, white on white 
doves take flight 
angels look down 
and carry me through another night

The Alterations Shop

It’s with those warm eyes that he welcomes you in
to his south-facing, perfectly makeshift Tailor’s Room
bathed in Syrian-infused shafts of Summertown sun.
He invites you in to place your effigies of privilege
on the wood counter, maybe a fur collared coat,
silk dress or school blazer, all handled with pride,
no resentment, no judgement at all.

And if you choose to enquire, you’ll hear
of a life dipped in world history,
see layers of untold stories in his eyes,
shards of building remains rising out of the
rubble and trouble witnessed on our screens.
You’ll discover intellectual sophistication,
Mustafa’s real profession, noble histories
and the art of friendly conversation.

From Syria to Summertown, he has bedded down,
made English his fourth language, a family,
and now he helps others who follow in his path.
Ahmed, the new tailor behind a sewing machine
has just left everyone and everything behind. 
He speaks no English, though Mustafa is giving him a tongue,
when the shop becomes a language classroom after 6.00pm.
Ahmed wears a halo of lonely relief to be here,
he returns smiles because you smile at him,
and that is our conversation, for now.

Mustafa keeps a careful check on the school kids outside,
floats towards the shop front when things get too loud,
notes the huddles of checked skirts and blazers
wisping towards the side alley for other inhalations,
and makes sure that Mrs Payne is reunited with her glove.

Like centuries of ethnic groups who have flushed in and out,
the clothes flood in and are expelled again,
with altered shape and new life, confirmed by safety-pinned
yellow chits and protective see-through shrouds. 

Rather than representing alterity,
Mustafa wishes to be part of the community,
though he is the creator of community,
by running this place into which we all pour,
leave feeling better, feeling more human, feeling restored

Emeline Winston is a producer of exhibitions in museums. Poetry came into her life unexpectedly.  In 2019, she was invited to what she thought was a poetry reading, but was shocked to discover a poetry-writing group.  It brought joy — and consolation through covid online meetings that went on for two years.  Emeline continued to write and recently started to share her work.

Derek Sellen

Three Girls on a Bridge
(after the painting by Edvard Munch)

White dress, red dress, green,
fair, dark, auburn,
they are three grace notes
in the brooding melody of dusk.

That dominant tree
Munch has massed mid-canvas
casts huge shadow on the mere,
like a bludgeon of authority –

it stands for fathers
who will control their lives,
mothers who will fuss them
into Ibsen marriages,

clerics who say they’re sinful,
neighbours spying on liaisons,
aunts to envy their freedoms,
men who will silence their music.

Something in that jaunty
summer hat with a red ribbon
tells they will defy the tree,
defy parents, defy pessimism,

and cross more bridges,
study, work, travel,
                       remember
this long evening
when, three girls as one,

they gained strength
from comradeship,
agreeing the women they would be.

Derek Sellen lives in Canterbury where he taught in an international college. Over the years his poetry has done well in competition, including winning Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year twice and O’Bheal Five Words (Cork, Ireland) three times, as well as Poets Meet Politics and Poets Meet Painters. His second collection, The Other Guernica’ was a finalist in the Poetry Book Awards. His new collection, The Night Bus, is scheduled for publication in Autumn 2026. 

Alfreda Black

To a Grey Squirrel
On Squarin’ Up Tae an Impudent Invader

Scram! Oot o’ there! Ya greedy chancer.
Raidin ma birdseed, s’no’ the answer.
No’ when yer left a gen’rous saucer o’ nuts n’ cheese.
Ah ask masel, ‘Why dae ah bother?’ for ye still thieve.

Aye, battle o’ wits we’ve oft engaged.
Me, loupin ower ma lawn, enraged!
Eyes locked, ye smirk frae ma feeder’s ledge, cheeks fou stappit.
Yet doubled ower ah’ve been seized wi’ a hootin fit.

One toe claw, yer hingin frae a branch
or showin aff yer tightrope dance.
Twitchy-tailed Tam, yer Mission… mince atop the grill,
picklock ma inventive, wee fence, scoff rind at will.

Mind, ah’d consider it a favour,
if, when stashin nuts ye labour,
gonnae please try oot ma neebor, she’s plenty pots.
Ma bonny rose n’ jasmine arbour, poor roots are shot!

Ah’m telt… ye starved yer wee, red cousin.
Spread fatal, squirrelpox infection.
Carpet-bagged their land tae rule in wi’ cocky stance .
Shame it’s no’ a comfy shoe-in, hae a backward glance.

There’s plans tae oust ye frae this fiefdom,
return a russet, celtic champion,
resolved tae mak ye yield dominion. Ha! Yer bubble’s burst!
Cast a beady eye at the rebellion in thon Woodland Trust.

We’ve… greedy greys in sleekit guises.
Claddin firms, Mail an’ sewage bosses.
Braw hooses, weel-loved gardens, prizes, for HS2 mates.
The brass-necked, fur-clad Peer who filches frae oor sparse plates.

An’ you? Wake up! Quit hibernatin.
Obscene wealth’s squirreled in The Caymans.
Weans’ dreams shrivel in fire-stormed domains stoked by ‘Big Oil’ pacts.
SEE! Oor fragile rights need guardians. We’ve tae vote, march… ACT.

Alfreda Black, M.Ed. (Glas). Retired primary teacher living in Glasgow. Married. Three children, one granddaughter. Started writing in late 40’s. Got hooked. Work published – Debut (emerging writer- Scribble). Work shortlisted – Bridport, and Tricia Ashley Award, longlisted – Fish Publication, chosen for 50 flash – Scottish Book Trust. Currently fine-tuning middle grade children’s novel Turning Troll – longlisted – Mslexia 2025, added to Agents 100 (Cheshire Novel Prize Kids). Planning on returning to The Sun Key – shelved, first middle grade novel.

David Ashbee

Two Fathers

Your father wouldn’t talk about the war.
He didn’t wake up shouting,
or shake on Guy Fawkes night,
but he wouldn’t go to Italy,
certainly not to Germany,
not even tour the cemeteries in France.
Home was what he’d fought for, where he stayed.

My father never spoke about the war,
never knew a Guy Fawkes Night,
never came to a Parents’ Evening
or to watch me in a play.
He missed out on everything he’d fought for.
Whatever that was. Home for him
was three thousand miles away.

He never got to Italy,
was stopped dead short of Germany.
Here in this photo is where he stayed in France,
with me leaning one arm on it.
Next week I’ll be back home
where no doubt I’ll stay,
having everything he earned his purple heart for.

David Ashbee has lived most of his 80 years in Gloucestershire, writing poetry for over 60 of these. A founder member of Cherington Poets, and a long time member of Cheltenham Poetry Society, he has 3 full collections to his name, the latest being Poems from The Mind Shop (Dempsey and Windle, 2021).

John Ling

Human to Human

Story me your life, and I will story mine.
Story me tender. Story me tough.
Tell me who you were, where you came from,
who you think you are, who you want to be,
I will know you better by your telling.
as you will yourself by the retelling.

Your story and mine will consist of stories
we were told by others about ourselves that
we came to believe. We remembered them.
We will believe stories heard over and over
about our family, our tribe, our country,
lives of the great, and even, just maybe,
of the little people, whose stories get lost
as the big ones get bigger in the telling.
And though historians find inconvenient facts,
we prefer the stories, for stories bear more truth.

We will talk, then we’ll talk, then we’ll begin to talk.
We will listen, then we’ll listen, then we’ll begin to listen.
Out of my story I will edit things
I would rather forget, as you will too.
Until some time when we decide to become
one story, we may feel safe enough
to tell the truth to each other.
Human to human. For we human beings
cannot move on until our stories
have been heard. So let us tell stories.
Let us tell stories till the light rolls home.

We will be angry
(for the people of Palestine)

Take my land, give it a new name.
let me have a small part. Call it a “territory”. 
In my territory let new people come,
people from all over, let them find my water,
build their houses near it, siphon it off,
let me have a little bit, and I will be angry.

Let them make roads between their settlements
that we cannot use, so we cannot get to work
without your permission, without documents.
Make us queue for hours, and we will be angry.
Build your high walls around our villages
so you cannot see us, but keep watch on us.
look down from the hills, plant your cameras and lights.
You  will not stop the graffiti, for we will be angry.

Burn our olive groves, spray them with sewage.
Attack our women at night. Cut off our power supplies.
Deny us cement and bricks. Blockade our shipping.
Make us pay tolls. Keep us in poverty,
Then if we protest spray us with tear gas,
imprison our leaders. Call them terrorists,
refuse to talk with them. Talk about talks you
know you will never have. Talk about self defence.
Talk all the usual crap of those who have power.

And for each little stone we throw in our anger
you may throw back a hundred boulders.
Say you are sorry for civilians you have killed.
Say it cannot be helped, we brought it on ourselves.
Say you have the right, you have right on your side.

And though you may kill me we will not die, for like you
we share a long memory. We will continue to be
a thorn in your flesh until one day you may remember
what it feels like to be persecuted, to be defiled,
to be trodden underfoot, to be robbed and displaced,
to lose children, siblings, parents, grandparents,
all at once, all together, who did you no wrong.
Until one day, one day, you may remember that
we and you are the same. We are born, live, and love,
we die, all equal, all one, here on what remains of
this earth that we share, that we share, with you.

John Ling is a mediator for neighbour disputes and for SEND cases, (children with special needs). He has published six books, two of poetry, two short stories, and two Social Stories for SEND children.

Anthony Watts

Wormhole

The distance between the ultimate good and the ultimate evil
may seem, well, long in terms of conventional transport. 

But should (as theophysicists believe)
the spiritual plane be curved through a dimension
at right-angles to the other eleven,

is it not then conceivable that these
apparent opposites might come to stand
in close proximity?
                                                                Imagine, then,
a wormhole opening up between the two
(this diagram should help, though the equation
you might not understand)

and history’s chosen ones – so many – passing through
with their shining faces and blood-soaked hands.

Anthony Watts has been writing ‘seriously’ for about 50 years.  He has won 26 First Prizes in poetry competitions and was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2014.  His poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies.  His fifth collection, ‘Stiles’, is published by Paekakariki Press.  He lives in rural Somerset and his main interests are poetry, music and walking  – activities which he finds can be happily combined.

Michelle Smith

February

February came with teeth like piano keys
it wore acid washed jeans
and licked the amber from the clouds.
It rained on tea parties
and made cobwebs between my fingers
that I left there.
It turned off all the streetlights
and spat broken prayers down the kitchen sink.
It shredded the sunlight with fishhook tonsils
and seasoned the pavement with crushed caterpillars.
It poked cigarette burns in the sky
and combed grief through my hair
that I left there.
It filled up cars with bathwater
and strangled the moon in floristry wire.
It sang an opera of pain
and then turned into March.

Michelle Smith is an emerging  poet and English teacher based in South Yorkshire. She writes intimate verse, using vivid and often surreal imagery. Her work explores themes of intimacy, memory, and the emotional weight of the mundane.

Elisa Schwarz

Even the Wind

She was born where the wind does not blow.
Never a hair out of place. Shirts neatly pressed and tucked in all just for show.

Moist skin. Where only Money Matters.
Dry eyes. That’s all she knows. Fixed genders, Concrete jungle, steady skies.

She reads the news on her back porch. What a disgrace.
While overlooking a dirty alleyway where garbage and her newspaper, without any wind, always stay fixed in one place.

Doomsday headlines of an America toppling to the ground are neatly folded on her lap.
And she wonders, have we totally lost the map?

She is told nothing needs to be held together because without the wind it will never blow away.
No effort required, right? Or so they say.

Yet everything is already broken.
Especially for those being bombed or silenced and censored for having misspoken.

She longs to be born of a people whose souls have been shaped by wind, gusts, air.
That dance off the ocean, onto the island, and weave into backyards without a care.

Through fields, and into kitchens, bending over laundry poles,
sending sheets flying into the neighbor’s yard, screaming “fuck you and your controls”.

Where silenced voices can safely yell into the wind without being muted.

Chapped skin. Gender fluid. Where Love Matters. Teary eyes. Where jokes can be made without getting booted.

She yearns to understand how something invisible can have the power to transform a town, move heavy objects, change lives, and how it never backs down.

Even the wind is political, you see?
To be born where your hair, your shirt, your headlines are never locked in one place, where she can be he and he can be she and they can be a they. You see?

Where there is rhythmic ebb and flow.
And babies don’t die in a genocide. You know?

Where moving currents can re-shape your mind, and your heart too.
Where the wind might knock you down, but it will never break or silence you.

Elisa Schwarz is a writer, facilitator, certified coach, and mother of two in Montreal. First published at twelve, she later studied Theatre Performance and Playwriting at Concordia University. Her career has spanned children’s theatre, television, film, communications consulting, and adult education. A two-time Culture Catalyst Award recipient for advancing equity and inclusion, Elisa infuses her work and art with that commitment. She is currently writing Water Brain, a memoir exploring addiction and grief.

Rules for Conflict or Collaboration competition 2025

Closed 31 October 2025

• The contest is open to all poets, except those who act as volunteers for Wildfire Words/Frosted Fire or major prizewinners in the last two years of Frosted Fire/Wildfire Words poetry competitions.
• All poems must be entirely the entrant’s own, unpublished work. Work shown to the public through social media or the poet’s own website counts as publication.
• International entrants are welcome, but entries must be in English. Translations are not allowed, unless the poet has translated their own poetry into English.
• You may submit as many poems as you like, in batches of up to 5 poems. Each poem should be a separate file, and an entry fee must be paid for each. Each poem may be submitted as text and audio
• Each poem’s title should be at the top of the page, and the file name of the poem, whether text or audio, must be the poem’s title.
• Each poem should be a separate text file in Word or PDF and no longer than 50 lines, including title and stanza break lines, or audio file as MP3 or M4A or WAV. If you are unable to make a recording, you can book a free private recording session at this link.
• Do not put any identification on the work. We will match your entry title to your email address after the anonymous judging is complete.
• Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but an entry must be withdrawn in the event of it winning a prize or publication elsewhere. Entry fees are not refundable once an entry has been received.
• Work will not be returned, so please keep a copy.
• We are unable to give feedback on individual entries or on the results of the competition — the judges’ decisions are final.
• Results will be emailed by 1 December to all who entered, and also published on this website and social media.
• The entry fee is £5 per poem or £21 for 5.
• Entries must be paid for on the entry form, and your entry file uploaded, by the closing time of 11.59 pm on 31 October 2024. Our banking for credit or debit card payments is provided by PayPal, but you do not need a PayPal account to pay by card.